


Miracles

by YaeL (thesometimeswarrior)



Series: Rabbis. In. SPACE! [3]
Category: Zionist Galactic Federation (Tumblr), תלמוד | Talmud
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Space, Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Ficlet, Folklore, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22997722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/YaeL
Summary: The first thing people notice about Shimon when he returns—after they get over the initial shock that after twelve years he is, somehow, still, in fact, alive—is his eyes.  There’s a luminous quality to them—they glow like a laser.(A folktale from the Space Station Yavnex-5780.)
Series: Rabbis. In. SPACE! [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630225
Comments: 10
Kudos: 9
Collections: Purimgifts 2020





	Miracles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Treon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Treon/gifts).



> This is undeniably the most space-related of these pieces. It's also the one based most heavily on one actual narrative in the Talmud. (I'll wait until the end note to reveal which one!)
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

The first thing people notice about Shimon when he returns—after they get over the initial shock that after twelve years he is, somehow, still, in fact, _alive_ —is his _eyes_. There’s a luminous quality to them. They almost _glow_. 

Word spreads quickly, of course, as it is wont to do on a space station. And seemingly within moments of his return to Yavnex-5780, the whole community seems to know what, precisely, had happened to him. 

When the story is told, it’s told like this:

After Shimon had left the station with his son on the shuttlecraft, they’d drifted for days, until eventually they’d come upon a remote asteroid—desolate, abandoned…and yet somehow still radiating light into the darkness of space around it. Perhaps not as brightly as a star might have, but nonetheless more than a cold, lifeless body floating in space ought to do. 

It had been an anomaly, unexplainable, and any logical instinct would have warned him to _stay away_. Instead, though, he’d felt a pull to it that had superseded the rational. 

Miracles are so rare out here, these days—would it not be an affront to the Almighty _not_ to seize one if it appeared?

And, as Shimon and his son approached, they’d learned that the miracle didn’t stop with the light. In fact, the glow wasn’t coming from the asteroid itself, but rather from _around_ it—there was, unbelievably enough, an _atmosphere_. 

So little is miraculous, out here in the darkness—especially on that station, so far away from sunlight, from air that isn’t artificial, from _ground_ beneath the feet—how could they _not_ land on the surface?

When they had, they’d discovered they could _breathe_. And not only could they breathe, but that luminescent air had indeed _sustained_ them—just as if it were a fruit tree or a flowing fresh stream. They found they’d needed no food, nor water. All they needed was that miraculous air. And they could sit, and discuss Torah, and want for nothing. 

Miracles are so rare—how could they not stay? Even if a side effect of that strange place with its strange atmosphere was a discoloration of the eyes, that the eyes inherited something of that glow. Even if that glow is disconcerting to an uninitiated observer.

(And this is the excuse people tell themselves, now, when they avert their gazes from his—that it’s the eyes that are disarming, and not the man himself.)

(This is, of course, selective memory. They’d never looked him in the eye before, either, and, yes, it _had_ been the eyes that had deterred them back then as well…but in those days, the _intensity_ of his gaze had deterred them. How he would pierce someone with it like a laser...)

(This is still the case now. Just that those eyes seem even more ominous in their intensity when they _glow_ like a laser too.)

* * *

Less than a day after his return, his wary compatriots are proven correct. And, when they are, word spreads quickly—this being a space station.

When the story is told, it’s told like this:

Shimon and his son wandered the halls of Yavnex-5780—eyes ablaze with their cool, strange glow—when they came upon a man bearing seeds to plant in the greenhouse pods. 

Something like rage overtook him then. He exclaimed to his son: “How petty these people are, on this station! So concerned with their physical lives, with planting these mere _seeds_ , that they never take time to _think_ of Eternal Life, and the joys of the Torah!”

And before his son could respond, Shimon’s eyes bore into the man, and a laser—glowing like the gaze itself—burst forth from them to pierce him!

(The man, for his part, was fine; if there’s one thing the pioneers of Yavnex-5780 have learned over the years, it’s how to effectively treat minor laser burns!)

Shimon’s face fell. Derision was at once replaced with apparent horror and resolve, and within an hour, he and his son were back on the shuttlecraft, presumably to return to the asteroid.

No one knows for sure what exactly happened in his mind, after the incident, that prompted him to flee once again—but everyone has a theory. The most predominant one is this:

Once Shimon’s gaze had materialized, had exploded out of him into something that hurt someone else, hurt a member of his own community, he had heard a voice inside him—some say the voice of God Godself—whisper something so achingly true that Shimon _knew_ he wasn’t ready, that he would have to go back to the asteroid for another year to ponder it.

And what did that voice say?

_You were so concerned with the Worlds to Come—with those miracles beyond the sky—that you failed to notice: the greatest miracle is not out there, but right in front of you. Did you not see: it’s that your people are_ here _, surviving, thriving, making life for themselves even in the midst of nothingness?_

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is based on a story in the Talmud, from Shabbat 33b. You can find it [here](https://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.33b?lang=bi). (Scroll down until halfway down the page, beginning with: "In this baraita Rabbi Yehuda is described as head of the speakers in every place..." The story really picks up with what happens to Shimon in the following paragraph.)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> \--
> 
> And now for the image! (I had a lot of fun with this one!)
> 
> (Classical depiction of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai...but his head is Cyclops from the X-Men!)


End file.
